Twilight Struggles in a Wilderness of Mirrors: Admiral Mike Rogers, the NSA, and Obama-era Political Spying

I believe that if the full story is told about Obama-era political spying, Admiral Mike Rogers (former head of NSA) will emerge as a hero. Sources say Rogers has been cooperating with the ongoing Durham investigation. Look for significant developments in the case as we approach the 2020 election...

Below is a Rogers timeline covering illegal spying using NSA data. This illegal use of data is a matter of record -- undisputed, but also largely unreported. The FISC (FISA court) report on this illegal use of data appeared in April 2017; the author is Rosemary Collyer, the head FISA judge. The report was originally classified Top Secret but was later declassified and released with redactions. Collyer uses the phrase "institutional lack of candor" when referring to behavior of federal agencies in their dealings with FISC over this issue.

Just this week, Collyer ordered the FBI to report on its abuse of FISA in surveillance of the Trump campaign, as documented in the Horowitz DOJ IG report.

More background on the earlier abuses here:

The court learned in October 2016 that analysts ... were conducting prohibited database searches “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court.” The forbidden queries were searches of Upstream Data using US-person identifiers. The report makes clear that as of early 2017 NSA Inspector General did not even have a good handle on all the ways that improper queries could be made to the system.

Timeline:

November 2015-April 2016 – The FBI and DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD) uses private contractors to access raw FISA information using “To” and “From” FISA-702(16) & “About” FISA-702(17) queries.

February 2016 NYT reports: Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That N.S.A. Intercepts "The new system would permit analysts at other intelligence agencies to obtain direct access to raw information from the N.S.A.’s surveillance to evaluate for themselves."

March 2016 – NSA Director Rogers becomes aware of improper access to raw FISA data.

April 2016 – Rogers orders the NSA compliance officer to run a full audit on 702 NSA compliance.

April 18 2016 – Rogers shuts down FBI/NSD contractor access to the FISA Search System.

Mid-October 2016 – DNI Clapper submits a recommendation to the White House that Director Rogers be removed from the NSA.

October 20 2016 – Rogers is briefed by the NSA compliance officer on the Section 702 NSA compliance audit and “About” query violations.

October 21 2016 – Rogers shuts down all “About Query” activity. Rogers reports the activity to DOJ and prepares to go before the FISA Court.

October 21 2016 – DOJ & FBI seek and receive a Title I FISA probable cause order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. At this point, the FISA Court is unaware of the Section 702 violations.

October 24 2016 – Rogers verbally informs the FISA Court of Section 702(17) violations.

October 26 2016 – Rogers formally informs the FISA Court of 702(17) violations in writing.

November 17 2016 (morning) – Rogers travels to meet President-Elect Trump and his Transition Team in Trump Tower. Rogers does not inform DNI James Clapper.

November 17 2016 (evening) – Trump Transition Team announces they are moving all transition activity to Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.

Parts of the timeline are from this 2018 article, which contains much more background. However, note that the events listed above are almost entirely a matter of public record now.

The 2017 FISC report does not reveal the exact nature of the abuses of NSA surveillance data, only that the abuses occurred, and in large volume. However, Rogers' behavior suggests very strongly that some of the abuses involved spying on political opposition.

Key issues:

Who were the FBI/DOJ contractors making the illegal queries? (Fusion GPS? Opposition research firms?)

Note that Upstream Data includes intercepts from the internet backbone -- essentially ALL of our communications pass through such channels and are potentially stored at NSA data centers.

Did FBI seek the Carter Page FISA warrant because earlier (illegal) access to NSA data was interrupted by Rogers?

What did Rogers reveal to the Trump transition team that caused them to move operations from Trump Tower to a golf course in New Jersey?

FBI had access not just to ongoing communications, but stored past communications (within "two hops") of Carter Page and other Trump campaign staff. They must have known very early on (it is suggested, by early 2017) that there was no Russian collusion. So what was the purpose of the Mueller investigation?

I believe Durham's investigation will be able to address many of these questions, although results may be classified and not shared with the public.

More fun facts: (Note I've always thought NSA the most competent and least political among CIA, FBI, NSA.)

James Clapper was the architect of the Russia Report – Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections. It was used to push the entire Russia Narrative...

The report was technically created by a joint effort between the CIA (former Director John Brennan), FBI (former Director James Comey) and the NSA (current Director Mike Rogers) – and assembled by the DNI (former Director James Clapper).

The joint report contains one significant caveat:

CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has only moderate confidence.

Rogers stated in Senate hearing testimony that his confidence did not reach even this threshold: "I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy, I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations and in the end I made that call.…It didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources."

Deep State Update

It's been clear for well over a year now that the Obama DOJ-FBI-CIA used massive surveillance powers (FISA warrant, and before that, national security letters and illegal contractor access to intelligence data) against the Trump campaign. In addition to SIGINT (signals intelligence, such as email or phone intercepts), we now know that HUMINT (spies, informants) was also used.

Until recently one could still be called a conspiracy theorist by the clueless for stating the facts in the paragraph above. But a few days ago the NYTimes and WaPo finally gave up (in an effort to shape the narrative in advance of DOJ Inspector General report(s) and other document releases that are imminent) and admitted that all of these things actually happened. The justification advanced by the lying press is that this was all motivated by fear of Russian interference -- there was no partisan political motivation for the Obama administration to investigate the opposition party during a presidential election.

If the Times and Post were dead wrong a year ago, what makes you think they are correct now?

Here are the two recent NYTimes propaganda articles:

F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims

Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation

Don't believe in the Deep State? Here is a 1983 Times article about dirty tricks HUMINT spook Stefan Halper (he's the CIA-FBI informant described in the recent articles above). Much more at the left of center Intercept.

Why doesn't Trump just fire Sessions/Rosenstein/Mueller or declassify all the docs?

For example, declassifying the first FISA application would show, as claimed by people like Chuck Grassley and Trey Gowdy, who have read the unredacted original, that it largely depends on the fake Steele Dossier, and that the application failed to conform to the required Woods procedures.

The reason for Trump's restraint is still not widely understood. There is and has always been strong GOP opposition to his candidacy and presidency ("Never Trumpers"). The anti-Trump, pro-immigration wing of his party would likely support impeachment under the right conditions. To their ends, the Mueller probe keeps Trump weak enough that he will do their bidding (lower taxes, help corporations and super-wealthy oligarchs) without straying too far from the bipartisan globalist agenda (pro-immigration, anti-nativism, anti-nationalism). If Trump were to push back too hard on the Deep State conspiracy against him, he would risk attack from his own party.

I believe Trump's strategy is to let the DOJ Inspector General process work its way through this mess -- there are several more reports coming, including one on the Hillary email investigation (draft available for DOJ review now; will be public in a few weeks), and another on FISA abuse and surveillance of the Trump campaign. The OIG is working with a DOJ prosecutor (John Huber, Utah) on criminal referrals emerging from the investigation. Former Comey deputy Andrew McCabe has already been referred for possible criminal charges due to the first OIG report. I predict more criminal referrals of senior DOJ/FBI figures in the coming months. Perhaps they will even get to former CIA Director Brennan (pictured at top), who seems to have lied under oath about his knowledge of the Steele dossier.

Trump may be saving his gunpowder for later, and if he has to expend some, it will be closer to the midterm elections in the fall.


Note added: For those who are not tracking this closely, one of the reasons the Halper story is problematic for the bad guys is explained in The Intercept:

... the New York Times reported in December of last year that the FBI investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia began when George Papadopoulos drunkenly boasted to an Australian diplomat about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was the disclosure of this episode by the Australians that “led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” the NYT claimed.

But it now seems clear that Halper’s attempts to gather information for the FBI began before that. “The professor’s interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium,” the Post reported. While it’s not rare for the FBI to gather information before formally opening an investigation, Halper’s earlier snooping does call into question the accuracy of the NYT’s claim that it was the drunken Papadopoulos ramblings that first prompted the FBI’s interest in these possible connections. And it suggests that CIA operatives, apparently working with at least some factions within the FBI, were trying to gather information about the Trump campaign earlier than had been previously reported.

Hmm.. so what made CIA/FBI assign Halper to probe Trump campaign staffers in the first place? It seems the cover story for the start of the anti-Trump investigation needs some reformulation...

Lies and Admissions: Spygate in light of the IG FISA report

Almost three years of hard work to bring the truth to light.

There was no spying   [ WE STARTED HERE ]

Okay, there was spying, but it was all legal

Some illegal things happened, but by mistake

A few bad apples did the illegal things   [ WE ARE HERE ]

Illegal spying was politically motivated and ordered from the top

Obama knew ???

No telling how far down the above list we will get, but:

Lisa Page (text to Peter Strzok 9/2/2016): POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing.

Cognitive dissonance can be painful. Learning can hurt.

Here are things you might have believed to be true (really?), but which have been debunked (e.g., by DOJ IG reports, sworn testimony, etc.):

ALL FALSE

The Steele Dossier has been verified [ FBI has known since early 2017 that it's junk, but failed to report primary source interview information undermining the dossier to FISA court. ]

The FISA applications did not depend primarily or extensively on the Steele Dossier [ Explicitly contradicted by IG Horowitz. ]

The FISA process is rigorous and was followed carefully [ See report ]

Carter Page is a Russian asset [ No, he was a CIA asset. CIA informed FBI about this but the FBI lied about it in the FISA application. This is a felony. ]

There was Russian collusion and the Mueller investigation will find it [HAHAHA]

There is no evidence of individual bias in FBI / DOJ spygate activity
[ Plentiful evidence of individual bias, so far no documentary or testimonial (IG terminology) evidence of institutional bias... Awaiting completion of Durham investigation. ] 

Please see the recent DOJ IG reports -- including the earlier one that reveals what happened to the Hillary emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop (hint, it's not what you think). If you don't want to read the reports that's fine -- just don't talk about the subject as if you know something. This compendium of excerpts from the latest IG report and quotes from Horowitz's testimony outlines some of the more serious findings.

Here's an excerpt from the latest IG report (p.188) that gives a sense what was known about the Steele dossier already in early 2017 from FBI interviews with Steele's Russian sources. None of this information made it into the multiple FISA renewal applications, the last one in June 2017.

The Primary Sub-source also informed WFO [Washington Field Office] Agent 1 that Steele tasked him/her after the 2016 U.S. elections to find corroboration for the election reporting and that the Primary Sub-source could find none. According to WFO Agent 1, during an interview in May 2017, the Primary Sub-source said the corroboration was "zero." The Primary Sub-source had reported the same conclusion to the Crossfire Hurricane team members who interviewed him/her in January 2017.

Regarding predication of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, note that DOJ IG Horowitz has very limited scope and powers of investigation -- all centered within DOJ/FBI. US Attorney John Durham has subpoena power and has reportedly interviewed people in the UK (Halper?) and Italy (Mifsud?) that the IG had no access to. Durham disagreed strongly with Horowitz's conclusion that the spying was properly predicated.

Horowitz's conclusion rests on the fragile thread of the Papadopoulos-Downer bar conversation, concerning information from Mifsud. It is very likely that Mifsud is a western intelligence asset, not a Russian asset. Who was behind Halper (known CIA asset) and Mifsud contacting individuals associated with the Trump campaign, beginning in early to mid 2016?

There are many earlier posts on this topic. See, for example, Deep State Update (May 2018):

... declassifying the first FISA application would show, as claimed by people like Chuck Grassley and Trey Gowdy, who have read the unredacted original, that it largely depends on the fake Steele Dossier, and that the application failed to conform to the required Woods procedures.

[ THIS IS NOW CONFIRMED BY THE IG REPORT ON FISA ABUSE. GRASSLEY, GOWDY, NUNES LARGELY CORRECT. SCHIFF NOT. ]

... the New York Times reported in December of last year that the FBI investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia began when George Papadopoulos drunkenly boasted to an Australian diplomat about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was the disclosure of this episode by the Australians that “led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” the NYT claimed.

[ Horowitz accepts this interaction as the basis for "proper predication" of the counterintelligence spying on the Trump campaign. But see below... ]

But it now seems clear that Halper’s attempts to gather information for the FBI began before that. “The professor’s interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium,” the Post reported. While it’s not rare for the FBI to gather information before formally opening an investigation, Halper’s earlier snooping does call into question the accuracy of the NYT’s claim that it was the drunken Papadopoulos ramblings that first prompted the FBI’s interest in these possible connections. And it suggests that CIA operatives, apparently working with at least some factions within the FBI, were trying to gather information about the Trump campaign earlier than had been previously reported.

Hmm.. so what made CIA/FBI assign Halper to probe Trump campaign staffers in the first place? It seems the cover story for the start of the anti-Trump investigation needs some reformulation...

[ STAY TUNED ... WE CAN HOPE THAT DURHAM'S INVESTIGATION WILL SHED FURTHER LIGHT ON THIS. HOROWITZ HAS/HAD NO SCOPE TO PURSUE IT -- HIS CONCLUSIONS ON THIS SPECIFIC POINT ARE LIKELY TO BE SUPERSEDED BY DURHAM'S. SEE DURHAM PUBLIC STATEMENT. ]

US Attorney John Durham statement:

... our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.

Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened ...

Video will start at 12:12 -- a very revealing 5m: Durham investigation, predication of Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation, political bias, open questions about CIA involvement prior to opening of Crossfire Hurricane Aug 31, 2016, etc.

Six Ways From Sunday: Tucker vs NSA

 

Chuck Schumer: You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you.

 

Tucker Carlson has potential as a politician -- there is at least a small chance that someday he'll be POTUS. The intelligence services are, I am sure, very interested in any kompromat they can acquire on him for future use. You mean foreign intel services? No, I mean our intel services :-(

Clarification, from comments: 

The post is not primarily about Tucker. It's about intel services spying on American citizens. 

Most importantly, Tucker's story is credible: some whistleblower saw intercepted Tucker emails and contacted him to let him know he is under surveillance. But as anyone paying attention knows, we are ALL under surveillance due to "bulk collection" revealed many years ago, e.g., by Snowden. The Rogers saga and FISC report show that this bulk-collected data is not very well protected from intel agency types who want to have a peek at it...  

Re: bulk collection, non-denial denials ("not an intelligence target of the Agency" ha ha), see

Wikipedia: According to a report in The Washington Post in July 2014, relying on information furnished by Snowden, 90% of those placed under surveillance in the U.S. are ordinary Americans, and are not the intended targets. The newspaper said it had examined documents including emails, message texts, and online accounts, that support the claim.

See Twilight Struggles in a Wilderness of Mirrors: Admiral Mike Rogers, the NSA, and Obama-era Political Spying.

Below is a Rogers timeline covering illegal spying using NSA data. This illegal use of data is a matter of record -- undisputed, but also largely unreported. The FISC (FISA court) report on this illegal use of data appeared in April 2017; the author is Rosemary Collyer, the head FISA judge. The report was originally classified Top Secret but was later declassified and released with redactions. Collyer uses the phrase "institutional lack of candor" when referring to behavior of federal agencies in their dealings with FISC over this issue. ... 

The court learned in October 2016 that analysts ... were conducting prohibited database searches “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court.” The forbidden queries were searches of Upstream Data using US-person identifiers. The report makes clear that as of early 2017 NSA Inspector General did not even have a good handle on all the ways that improper queries could be made to the system. ... 

March 2016 – NSA Director Rogers becomes aware of improper access to raw FISA data. 

April 2016 – Rogers orders the NSA compliance officer to run a full audit on 702 NSA compliance. 

April 18 2016 – Rogers shuts down FBI/NSD contractor access to the FISA Search System. 

Mid-October 2016 – DNI Clapper submits a recommendation to the White House that Director Rogers be removed from the NSA. 

October 20 2016 – Rogers is briefed by the NSA compliance officer on the Section 702 NSA compliance audit and “About” query violations. 

October 21 2016 – Rogers shuts down all “About" query activity. Rogers reports the activity to DOJ and prepares to go before the FISA Court. 

October 21 2016 – DOJ & FBI seek and receive a Title I FISA probable cause order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. At this point, the FISA Court is unaware of the Section 702 violations. 

October 24 2016 – Rogers verbally informs the FISA Court of Section 702(17) violations. 

October 26 2016 – Rogers formally informs the FISA Court of 702(17) violations in writing. 

November 17 2016 (morning) – Rogers travels to meet President-Elect Trump and his Transition Team in Trump Tower. Rogers does not inform DNI James Clapper. 

November 17 2016 (evening) – Trump Transition Team announces they are moving all transition activity to Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.

I was recently in a Zoom meeting on geopolitics that included Admiral Rogers. I wanted to ask him privately about the above. Perhaps someday I'll get the chance.

 

Caption: NSA Director Rogers describes to Congress how little privacy Americans have from government surveillance. 

Alternate Caption: NSA Director Rogers tells Congress how much legal oversight remains over the activities of intel services.

#RussiaHoax is the new WMD

No, there was never any Russian Collusion. But there was illegal spying on the political opposition by the Obama intelligence services. With the Mueller investigation now out of the way, I hope to see important, previously hidden, information declassified in the near future:

1. Multiple FISA applications to spy on anyone within "two hops" of Carter Page (i.e., the entire Trump campaign and transition team)

2. Originating Electronic Communication (EC) from CIA Director John Brennan to FBI Director James Comey. The two-page EC gives Brennan's justification for operation “Crossfire Hurricane” to investigate the Trump campaign (July 31, 2016).

3. Sworn testimony by Strzok, Ohr, Page, McCabe, etc. etc.

See, e.g., Spygate in 20 Minutes and Deep State Update.

If you took the #RussiaHoax seriously, and have any pretensions to rationality, then you must update your priors concerning the reliability of the media, and of our security and intelligence services.

Below, an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's forthcoming book Hate Inc.

It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD

The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it

Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief’s independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no “presidency-wrecking” conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman’s definition of “collusion” with Russia.

With the caveat that even this news might somehow turn out to be botched, the key detail in the many stories about the end of the Mueller investigation was best expressed by the New York Times:

A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments.

The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.

The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” to him featuring the rhymey line: “Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.”

The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller’s reputation, noting Trump’s Attorney General William Barr’s reaction was an “endorsement” of the fineness of Mueller’s work:

In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a “witch hunt,” Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia “contacts,” inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker, the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:

It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole…

This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting “We don’t need to read the Mueller report” because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: “Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”

The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like itself made galactic errors by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to “history’s judgment” on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.

Here is the Wall Street Journal:

WSJ: Mueller Is Done. Now Probe the Real Scandal

Attorney General William Barr has reported to Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller has cleared President Trump and his campaign team of claims of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election. This is more than an exoneration. It’s a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau’s corrosive investigation.

Mr. Mueller’s report likely doesn’t put it that way, but it’s the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal—surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants.

... None of this should ever have happened absent highly compelling evidence—from the start—of wrongdoing. Yet from what we know, the FBI operated on the basis of an overheard conversation of third-tier campaign aide George Papadopoulos, as well as a wild “dossier” financed by the rival presidential campaign. Mr. Mueller’s no-collusion finding amounts to a judgment that there never was any evidence. The Papadopoulos claim was thin, the dossier a fabrication.

Which is all the more reason Americans now deserve a full accounting of the missteps of former FBI Director James Comey and his team—in part so that this never happens again. That includes the following: What “evidence” did the FBI have in totality? What efforts did the bureau take to verify it? Did it corroborate anything before launching its probe? What role did political players play? How aware was the FBI that it was being gulled into a dirty-trick operation, and if so, how did it justify proceeding? How intrusive were the FBI methods? And who was harmed?

...

How NSA Tracks You (Bill Binney)

Anyone who is paying attention knows that the Obama FBI/DOJ used massive government surveillance powers against the Trump team during and after the election. A FISA warrant on Carter Page (and Manafort and others?) was likely used to mine stored communications of other Trump team members. Hundreds of "mysterious" unmasking requests by Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, etc. were probably used to identify US individuals captured in this data.

I think it's entirely possible that Obama et al. thought they were doing the right (moral, patriotic) thing -- they really thought that Trump might be colluding with the Russians. But as a civil libertarian and rule of law kind of guy I want to see it all come to light. I have been against this kind of thing since GWB was president -- see this post from 2005!

My guess is that NSA is intercepting and storing big chunks of, perhaps almost all, US email traffic. They're getting almost all metadata from email and phone traffic, possibly much of the actual voice traffic converted to text using voice recognition. This used to be searchable only by a limited number of NSA people (although that number grew a lot over the years; see 2013 article and LOVEINT below), but now available to many different "intel" agencies in the government thanks to Obama.

Situation in 2013: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=207195207

(Note Title 1 FISA warrant grants capability to look at all associates of target... like the whole Trump team.)

Obama changes in 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama-administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html

NYT: "The new system would permit analysts at other intelligence agencies to obtain direct access to raw information from the N.S.A.’s surveillance to evaluate for themselves. If they pull out phone calls or email to use for their own agency’s work, they would apply the privacy protections masking innocent Americans’ information... ” HA HA HA I guess that's what all the UNmasking was about...

More on NSA capabilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT (think how broad their coverage has to be for spooks to be able to spy on their wife or girlfriend)

See also FISA, EO 12333, Bulk Collection, and All That.

Wikipedia: William Edward Binney[3] is a former highly placed intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency (NSA)[4] turned whistleblower who resigned on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years with the agency.

He was a high-profile critic of his former employers during the George W. Bush administration, and later criticized the NSA's data collection policies during the Barack Obama administration. 

From the transcript of Binney's talk:

07:45
ways that they basically collect data
07:48
first it's they use the corporations
07:50
that run the fiber-optic lines and they
07:53
get them to allow them to put taps on
07:55
them and I'll show you some of the taps
07:57
where they are and and if that doesn't
07:59
work they use the foreign government to
08:00
go at their own telecommunications
08:02
companies to do the similar thing and if
08:04
that doesn't work they'll tap the line
08:06
anywhere they can get to it and they
08:08
won't even know it you know the
08:09
government's know that communications
08:11
companies will even though they're
08:12
tapped so that's how they get into it
08:14
then I get into fiber lines and this is
08:17
this is a the prism program ...

that was published
08:30
out of the Snowden material and they've
08:32
all focused on prism well prism is
08:36
really the the minor program I mean the
08:40
major program is upstream that's where
08:42
they have the fiber-optic taps on
08:43
hundreds of places around in the world
08:45
that's where they're collecting off the
08:47
fiber lined all the data and storing it

2016 FISC reprimand of Obama administration. The court learned in October 2016 that analysts at the National Security Agency were conducting prohibited database searches “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court.” The forbidden queries were searches of Upstream Data using US-person identifiers. The report makes clear that as of early 2017 NSA Inspector General did not even have a good handle on all the ways that improper queries could be made to the system. (Imagine Snowden-like sys admins with a variety of tools that can be used to access raw data.) Proposed remedies to the situation circa-2016/17 do not inspire confidence (please read the FISC document).

Nunes, Trump, Obama and Who Watches the Watchers?

I've made this separate entry from the update to my earlier discussion FISA, EO 12333, Bulk Collection, and All That. I believe the Nunes revelations from yesterday support my contention that the Trump team intercepts are largely "incidental" collections (e.g., bulk collections using tapped fiber, etc.) under 12333, and the existence of many (leaked) intel reports featuring these intercepts is likely a consequence of Obama's relaxation of the rules governing access to this bulk data. At least, the large number of possible leakers helps hide the identities of the actual leakers!

EO12333 + Obama OKs unprecedented sharing of this info as he leaves office = recent leaks? Note the use of the term "incidentally" and the wide dissemination (thanks to Obama policy change as he left office).

WSJ: ... “I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition,” Mr. Nunes said, reading a brief statement to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday afternoon. “Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration—details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value—were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

... Mr. Nunes added that it was “possible” the president himself had some of his communication intercepted, and has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies for more information.

The change put in place as Obama left office is probably behind the large number of circulating reports that feature "incidentally" captured communications of the Trump team. The NYTimes article below is from February.

NYTimes: ... Until now, National Security Agency analysts have filtered the surveillance information for the rest of the government. They search and evaluate the information and pass only the portions of phone calls or email that they decide is pertinent on to colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies. And before doing so, the N.S.A. takes steps to mask the names and any irrelevant information about innocent Americans.

[ So FBI is only getting access to this data for the first time. It is interesting that Nunes said that NSA would comply with his request for more information but that FBI has not complied. It seems possible that FBI does not yet have good internal controls over how its agents use these new privileges. ]

The new system would permit analysts at other intelligence agencies to obtain direct access to raw information from the N.S.A.’s surveillance to evaluate for themselves. If they pull out phone calls or email to use for their own agency’s work, they would apply the privacy protections masking innocent Americans’ information — a process known as “minimization” — at that stage, Mr. Litt said.

... FISA covers a narrow band of surveillance: the collection of domestic or international communications from a wire on American soil, leaving most of what the N.S.A. does uncovered. In the absence of statutory regulation, the agency’s other surveillance programs are governed by rules the White House sets under a Reagan-era directive called Executive Order 12333.

... [it is unclear what] rules say about searching the raw data using names or keywords intended to bring up Americans’ phone calls or email that the security agency gathered “incidentally” under the 12333 surveillance programs ...

It appears that the number of individuals allowed to search bulk, incidentally collected data has been enlarged significantly. Who watches these watchers? (There must now be many thousands...)

Sophos: Obama administration signs off on wider data-sharing for NSA ... Patrick Toomey, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), put it in an interview with the New York Times, 17 intelligence agencies are now going to be “rooting… through Americans’ emails with family members, friends and colleagues, all without ever obtaining a warrant”.

The new rules mean that the FBI, the CIA, the DEA, and intelligence agencies of the US military’s branches and more, will be able to search through raw signals intelligence (SIGINT): intercepted signals that include all manner of people’s communications, be it via satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, as well as messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

Added: Quick and dirty summary of new rules governing access to raw SIGINT. Note, lots of room for abuse in what I quote below:

Section III: ... NSA may make raw SIGINT available through its own systems, through a shared IC or other government capability (like a cloud environment), or by transferring the information to the IC element's information systems.

Section V: ... Communications solely between U.S. persons “inadvertently retrieved during the selection of foreign communications” will be destroyed except if they contain significant foreign intelligence or counterintelligence as determined by the IC element.

Section VI: ... An IC element may disseminate U.S. person information "derived solely from raw SIGINT" under these procedures ... if ... the information is “necessary to understand the foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information,”

Here are the entities who now have access (thanks Obama!) to raw SIGINT, and seem to have the discretionary power to "unmask" US citizens appearing in the data.

IC elements are defined under 3.5(h) of E.O. 12333 as: (1) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence; (2) The Central Intelligence Agency; (3) The National Security Agency; (4) The Defense Intelligence Agency; (5) The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; (6) The National Reconnaissance Office; (7) The other offices within the Department of Defense for the collection of specialized national foreign intelligence through reconnaissance programs; (8) The intelligence and counterintelligence elements of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps; (9) The intelligence elements of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; (10) The Office of National Security Intelligence of the Drug Enforcement Administration; (11) The Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence of the Department of Energy; (12) The Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State; (13) The Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of the Treasury; (14) The Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security; (15) The intelligence and counterintelligence elements of the Coast Guard; and (16) Such other elements of any department or agency as may be designated by the President, or designated jointly by the Director and the head of the department or agency concerned, as an element of the Intelligence Community.

FISA, EO 12333, Bulk Collection, and All That

Some basic questions for the experts:

1. To what extent does EO12333 allow surveillance of US individuals without FISA warrant?

2. To what extent are US voice conversations recorded via bulk collection (and preserved for, e.g., 5 or more years)? The email answer is clear ... But now automated voice recognition and transcription make storage of voice conversations much more scalable.

3. To what extent do Five Eyes intel collaborators have direct access to preserved data?

4. Are "experts" and media pundits and Senators even asking the right questions on this topic? For example, can stored bulk-collected voice data from a US individual be accessed by NSA without FISA approval by invoking 12333? How can one prevent a search query on stored data from producing results of this type?

See, e.g., Overseas Surveillance in an Interconnected World (Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law), ACLU.org, and Executive Order 12333 (epic.org):

EPIC has tracked the government's reliance on EO 12333, particularly the reliance on Section 1:12(b)(13), which authorizes the NSA to provide "such administrative and technical support activities within and outside the United States as are necessary to perform the functions described in sections (1) through (12) above, including procurement." This provision appears to have opened the door for the NSA's broad and unwarranted surveillance of U.S. and foreign citizens.

Executive Order 12333 was signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 4, 1981. It established broad new surveillance authorities for the intelligence community, outside the scope of public law. EO 12333 has been amended three times. It was amended by EO 13284 on January 23, 2003 and was then amended by EO 13555 on August 27, 2004. EO 13555 was subtitled "Strengthened Management of the Intelligence Community" and reflected the fact that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) now existed as the head of the intelligence community, rather than the CIA which had previously served as the titular head of the IC. EO 13555 partially supplemented and superseded EO 12333. On July 30, 2008, President George W. Bush signed EO 13470, which further supplemented and superseded EO 12333 to strengthen the role of the Director of National Intelligence.

Since the Snowden revaluations there has been a great deal of discussion regarding the activities of the IC community, but relatively little attention has been paid to EO 12333. EO 12333 often serves an alternate basis of authority for surveillance activities, above and beyond Section 215 and 702. As Bruce Schneier has emphasized, "Be careful when someone from the intelligence community uses the caveat "not under this program," or "not under this authority"; almost certainly it means that whatever it is they're denying is done under some other program or authority. So when[NSA General Counsel Raj] De said that companies knew about NSA collection under Section 702, it doesn't mean they knew about the other collection programs." Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said in August 2013 that, "The committee does not receive the same number of official reports on other NSA surveillance activities directed abroad that are conducted pursuant to legal authorities outside of FISA (specifically Executive Order 12333), but I intend to add to the committee's focus on those activities." In July 2014, a former Obama State Department official, John Napier Tye, wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post calling for greater scrutiny of EO 12333. Tye noted that "based in part on classified facts that I am prohibited by law from publishing, I believe that Americans should be even more concerned about the collection and storage of their communications under Executive Order 12333 than under Section 215."

Tye in the WaPo:

... [EO 12333] authorizes collection of the content of communications, not just metadata, even for U.S. persons. Such persons cannot be individually targeted under 12333 without a court order. However, if the contents of a U.S. person’s communications are “incidentally” collected (an NSA term of art) in the course of a lawful overseas foreign intelligence investigation, then Section 2.3(c) of the executive order explicitly authorizes their retention. It does not require that the affected U.S. persons be suspected of wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S. persons that may be collected and retained.

[ E.g., NSA could "incidentally" retain the email of a US individual which happens to be mirrored in Google or Yahoo data centers outside the US, as part of bulk collection for an ongoing (never ending) foreign intelligence or anti-terrorism investigation... ]

“Incidental” collection may sound insignificant, but it is a legal loophole that can be stretched very wide. Remember that the NSA is building a data center in Utah five times the size of the U.S. Capitol building, with its own power plant that will reportedly burn $40 million a year in electricity.

See also Mining your data at NSA (source of image at top).

UPDATE: EO12333 + Obama OKs unprecedented sharing of this info as he leaves office = recent leaks? Note the use of the term "incidentally" and the wide dissemination (thanks to Obama policy change as he left office).

WSJ: ... “I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition,” Mr. Nunes said, reading a brief statement to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday afternoon. “Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration—details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value—were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

... Mr. Nunes added that it was “possible” the president himself had some of his communication intercepted, and has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies for more information.

The change put in place as Obama left office is probably behind the large number of circulating reports that feature "incidentally" captured communications of the Trump team. The NYTimes article below is from February.

NYTimes: ... Until now, National Security Agency analysts have filtered the surveillance information for the rest of the government. They search and evaluate the information and pass only the portions of phone calls or email that they decide is pertinent on to colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies. And before doing so, the N.S.A. takes steps to mask the names and any irrelevant information about innocent Americans.

The new system would permit analysts at other intelligence agencies to obtain direct access to raw information from the N.S.A.’s surveillance to evaluate for themselves. If they pull out phone calls or email to use for their own agency’s work, they would apply the privacy protections masking innocent Americans’ information — a process known as “minimization” — at that stage, Mr. Litt said.

... FISA covers a narrow band of surveillance: the collection of domestic or international communications from a wire on American soil, leaving most of what the N.S.A. does uncovered. In the absence of statutory regulation, the agency’s other surveillance programs are governed by rules the White House sets under a Reagan-era directive called Executive Order 12333.

... [it is unclear what] rules say about searching the raw data using names or keywords intended to bring up Americans’ phone calls or email that the security agency gathered “incidentally” under the 12333 surveillance programs ...

It appears that the number of individuals allowed to search bulk, incidentally collected data has been enlarged significantly. Who watches these watchers? (There must now be many thousands...)

Sophos: ... Patrick Toomey, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), put it in an interview with the New York Times, 17 intelligence agencies are now going to be “rooting… through Americans’ emails with family members, friends and colleagues, all without ever obtaining a warrant”.

The new rules mean that the FBI, the CIA, the DEA, and intelligence agencies of the US military’s branches and more, will be able to search through raw signals intelligence (SIGINT): intercepted signals that include all manner of people’s communications, be it via satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, as well as messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

Will Trump Pardon Obama?

I get that I'm supposed to hate this lady and her boss, but can someone do me a favor by answering the questions she posed?

1) Why did the Obama administration spy on members of the Trump campaign, during and after the campaign?

2) Why was General Michael Flynn unmasked by Obama's chief of staff, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, and others?

3) Why was Flynn's identity leaked to the press (a felony)?

4) Why did AG Sally Yates (DOJ) first learn about the FBI investigation of Flynn's communication with the Russian Ambassador from a conversation with Obama in the Oval Office?

5) Why did James Clapper, John Brennan, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice privately admit under oath (Congressional testimony, only declassified recently) that they had no evidence of collusion, while saying the opposite in public? (2017-2019)

If you have any pretensions to rationalism (or even to being moderately well-informed), please score your understanding, over time, of this scandal which has unfolded since 2016. My observations are well documented since the beginning.

In addition to items #4 and #5 above, which only became public through recent declassification, the other new fact is: On January 4 (day before the White House meeting which included Obama, Biden, Comey, Yates, and Rice, and which was memorialized by Rice in the infamous CYA email to herself weeks later), FBI field agents working on the Flynn investigation, who had access to the Dec 29 call with Kislyak, recommended closing the case on Flynn due to what they referred to as absence of derogatory information. Of course, as a result of the January 5 White House meeting, the case was NOT closed and the rest is history (like Watergate, only worse).

None of this information is disputed, but you won't hear much about it from NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc. But see WSJ: here and here.

Added: I wrote the post Lies and Admissions: Spygate in light of the IG FISA report in December 2019, after the DOJ Inspector General's report on FISA abuse became public. Media coverage of its content was extremely misleading (details at the link). The 3+ year timeline I described (reproduced below) has now reached its endpoint due to the recent (May 2020) declassifications.

Almost three years of hard work to bring the truth to light.

There was no spying [ WE STARTED HERE 2016 ]

Okay, there was spying, but it was all legal

Some illegal things happened, but by mistake

A few bad apples did the illegal things [ WE ARE HERE 12/2019 ]

Illegal spying was politically motivated and ordered from the top

Obama knew ???  [ BEYOND DOUBT NOW 5/2020 ]

No telling how far down the above list we will get, but:

Lisa Page (text to Peter Strzok 9/2/2016): POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing.

Public Troubled by Deep State (Monmouth Poll)

If you use the term Deep State in the current political climate you are liable to be declared a right wing conspiracy nut. But it was Senator Chuck Schumer who warned Trump (on Rachel Maddow's show) that

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,”

In 2014 it was Senator Dianne Feinstein who accused the CIA (correctly, it turns out) of spying on Congressional staffers working for the Intelligence Committee. Anyone who is paying attention now knows that the Obama FBI/DOJ used massive government surveillance powers against the Trump team during and after the election. (Title 1 FISA warrant granted against Carter Page allowed queries against intercepted and stored communications with prior associates, including US citizens...) Had Trump lost the election none of this would have ever come to light.

If this is not a Deep State, then what is?

Monmouth University: A majority of the American public believe that the U.S. government engages in widespread monitoring of its own citizens and worry that the U.S. government could be invading their own privacy. The Monmouth University Poll also finds a large bipartisan majority who feel that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a “Deep State” of unelected government officials. Americans of color on the center and left and NRA members on the right are among those most worried about the reach of government prying into average citizens’ lives.

Just over half of the public is either very worried (23%) or somewhat worried (30%) about the U.S. government monitoring their activities and invading their privacy. There are no significant partisan differences – 57% of independents, 51% of Republicans, and 50% of Democrats are at least somewhat worried the federal government is monitoring their activities. Another 24% of the American public are not too worried and 22% are not at all worried.

Fully 8-in-10 believe that the U.S. government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens, including a majority (53%) who say this activity is widespread and another 29% who say such monitoring happens but is not widespread. Just 14% say this monitoring does not happen at all. There are no substantial partisan differences in these results.

“This is a worrisome finding. The strength of our government relies on public faith in protecting our freedoms, which is not particularly robust. And it’s not a Democratic or Republican issue. These concerns span the political spectrum,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Few Americans (18%) say government monitoring or spying on U.S. citizens is usually justified, with most (53%) saying it is only sometimes justified. Another 28% say this activity is rarely or never justified. Democrats (30%) and independents (31%) are somewhat more likely than Republicans (21%) to say government monitoring of U.S. citizens is rarely or never justified.

Turning to the Washington political infrastructure as a whole, 6-in-10 Americans (60%) feel that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. Just 26% say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials in determining policy. Democrats (59%), Republicans (59%) and independents (62%) agree that appointed officials hold too much sway in the federal government.

“We usually expect opinions on the operation of government to shift depending on which party is in charge. But there’s an ominous feeling by Democrats and Republicans alike that a ‘Deep State’ of unelected operatives are pulling the levers of power,” said Murray.

Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term “Deep State;” another 24% are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington. This includes 27% who say it definitely exists and 47% who say it probably exists. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist (16% probably not and 5% definitely not). Belief in the probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group, although Republicans (31%) and independents (33%) are somewhat more likely than Democrats (19%) to say that the Deep State definitely exists.

Spygate in 20 minutes

Bongino (former federal agent and TV/podcast personality) gives a very clear and entertaining overview of Spygate: the illegal use of government surveillance powers against an opposition political candidate (Donald Trump). I agree with Bongino that this is the biggest political scandal in the modern era, orders of magnitude beyond Watergate. But because the story is complicated and has been largely covered up (as much as possible) by the media, few people understand what actually happened. You can get the gist of it in 20 minutes from the video. (Real content starts @6min or so.)

As Bongino states, the factual claims in his talk can all be sourced from reporting by "mainstream" news outlets such as CNN, NYTimes, WSJ, or from government documents such as the declassified (2017) FISC report on abuses of surveillance powers. But you will not find them all in one place as you do in the video (or on my blog).

See Deep State Update (May 2018):

It's been clear for well over a year now that the Obama DOJ-FBI-CIA used massive surveillance powers (FISA warrant, and before that, national security letters and illegal contractor access to intelligence data) against the Trump campaign. In addition to SIGINT (signals intelligence, such as email or phone intercepts), we now know that HUMINT (spies, informants) was also used.

Until recently one could still be called a conspiracy theorist by the clueless for stating the facts in the paragraph above. But a few days ago the NYTimes and WaPo finally gave up (in an effort to shape the narrative in advance of DOJ Inspector General report(s) and other document releases that are imminent) and admitted that all of these things actually happened. The justification advanced by the lying press is that this was all motivated by fear of Russian interference -- there was no partisan political motivation for the Obama administration to investigate the opposition party during a presidential election.

If the Times and Post were dead wrong a year ago, what makes you think they are correct now?

The Face of the Deep State: John Brennan perjury

Just for fun, Google John Brennan perjury and follow the trail. Here is former CIA Director Brennan raging at President Trump:

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you. https://t.co/uKppoDbduj

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) March 17, 2018

Here is The Guardian, charging Brennan with lying about CIA spying on the Senate in 2014. What do Democrat Senators Feinstein and Wyden think of Brennan's credibility? No need to guess, just keep reading.

Guardian: CIA director John Brennan lied to you and to the Senate. Fire him. (2014)

As reports emerged Thursday that an internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general found that the CIA “improperly” spied on US Senate staffers when researching the CIA’s dark history of torture, it was hard to conclude anything but the obvious: John Brennan blatantly lied to the American public. Again.

“The facts will come out,” Brennan told NBC News in March after Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a blistering condemnation of the CIA on the Senate floor, accusing his agency of hacking into the computers used by her intelligence committee’s staffers. “Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate,” he said.

After the CIA inspector general’s report completely contradicted Brennan’s statements, it now appears Brennan was forced to privately apologize to intelligence committee chairs in a “tense” meeting earlier this week. Other Senators on Thursday pushed for Brennan to publicly apologize and called for an independent investigation. Sen. Ron Wyden said it well:

Ron Wyden (@RonWyden)
@CIA broke into Senate computer files. Then tried to have Senate staff prosecuted. Absolutely unacceptable in a democracy.

July 31, 2014

Here is Brennan, under oath, claiming no knowledge of the origins of the Steele dossier or whether it was used in a FISA application -- May 23, 2017! Credible?



See also How NSA Tracks You (Bill Binney).